Michael Garrett Gets 15 Years for Mailing PCP via Corrupt Postal Route

Michael Garrett, 57, of Victorville, Calif., formerly of the Kansas City area, was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison without parole for running a cross-state PCP pipeline using the U.S. mail and a compromised postal carrier. The sentence, handed down today by U.S. District Judge Howard F. Sachs, caps a brazen scheme that turned the postal system into a drug mule for multi-kilogram shipments of liquid PCP.

Garrett pleaded guilty on Sept. 1, 2016, to conspiracy to distribute PCP and using a telephone to facilitate drug distribution. His co-defendant, Carol Barfield, 65, a former Kansas City, Mo., postal carrier, admitted her role on Nov. 14, 2016, and awaits sentencing. From Nov. 2, 2015, to March 4, 2016, the pair orchestrated a network where Garrett shipped 15 parcels from California — each weighing over 10 pounds — to addresses on Barfield’s delivery route, all labeled with fake sender info and fictitious recipients.

Barfield, operating under Garrett’s instructions, scanned the packages as “delivered” without actually handing them off. On March 4, 2016, federal agents watching her route caught her loading four parcels into her postal vehicle. She scanned one as delivered, another as undeliverable, and left a third on a doorstep — but the homeowner, not the listed recipient, returned it when he spotted Barfield nearby. The final package was logged as “no secure location,” then all four were later rescanned as undeliverable and returned to the post office.

Inside each of the four suspicious parcels: two 64-ounce Welch’s Grape Juice bottles filled with PCP. The total liquid weight clocked in at 13.45 kilograms. Investigators confirmed surveillance footage of Garrett mailing the packages at the Victorville post office on March 1, 2016, using a false name and address. The juice bottles, repurposed to hide the toxic drug, were a deliberate effort to evade detection.

Barfield told investigators Garrett had used her route five or six times, usually sending three packages per drop. When he didn’t mail them, he’d fly into Kansas City and she’d hand over the parcels directly — or pass them to an acquaintance. If left at an address, she knew someone tied to Garrett would retrieve them. In return, Garrett bought her clothes, repaired her car, and handed her cash — up to $500 at a time — calling it “spending money” and claiming he was “taking care of her.”

At the time of the crimes, Garrett was on federal supervised release following a 1991 conviction in the Western District of Missouri for conspiracy to possess crack cocaine with intent to distribute and attempted possession of crack cocaine. His return to trafficking — this time using the postal system as a weapon — underscores a pattern of exploiting weak links in public institutions. The case was prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Missouri under Tammy Dickinson, who emphasized that corruption of federal workers will be met with maximum penalties.